Unable to connect to virtual machine after moving it

[tuberb]

I was reconfiguring storage on the machine running esxi, adding a new physical disk and creating a datastore on it, and then moving virtual machines over to the new datastore and testing that they would run and could be accessed, which they could be.

Today I physically disconnedted the disk that the virtual machines had been on after deleting its datastore. When I start the VMs that had been moved and try to access them from a console, in the exsi browser I get a "failed to connect" and from the remote console I get "The webmks ticket has expired". A couple of the VMs can be reached on their own through the services they are running, but one of them I had only been accessing from an esxi console.

Any suggestions on how to regain access from esxi?

Thanks,

Barry

[tuberb]

Still hoping for help with this. I remain unable to connect to a console for virtual machines that are running on this ESXi server.

Thanks in advance.

Barry

[pmichelli]

How did you go about removing the datastore? How did you move the VMs from one datastore to another?

Are you running vCenter or is this just a single ESXi instance?

An option that may help... Power off the VM, remove it from inventory, browse the datastore where it lives and add it back to inventory. Then power it back up and see if it helps

[tuberb]

When I removed the empty datastore I selected Unmount for it under Actions in ESXi. And I am only running a single ESXi instance.

I just tried what you suggested (which I think I had already tried previously). I unregistered the virtual machine, and then registered it again from the datastore. I continue to get the "unable to connect" error, and while the VM is running I cannot access it from a console.

Barry

[tuberb]

When I moved the machine to the new datastore I did it via "move" from the datastore browser. I ran them and was able to access them while the old datastore was still present, but once I removed the datastore I was migrating from, the moved virtual machines became inaccessible.

Barry

[mrdrei]

I'm not quite sure, if a "move" in the datastore browser moves the virtual machine to another datastore.

You could have a look at the "vm hardware" in the summay of the vm, there you should see, which datastore the hard disk of

the vm is located.

regards

chris

[pmichelli]

Hi Barry

I am at a bit of a loss here. I can't think of anything that would do this. What happens if you create a new VM ? Do you get the same experience. 

It may be worth opening an SR with VMware if you have any support. Can you provide any screenshots? It may help visualize where to go next

[tuberb]

Quick update; the issue of being unable to connect is related to an SSL certificate installed on the ESXi host. When I access ESXi using the domain name covered by the certificate (which is a Let's Encrypt certificate) I am unable to access the VMs from a console. When I access the same host via an insecuire connection to the IP address everything works.

I could swear I was able to access things via the secure connection before I reconfigured storage. At the moment, even after updating the certificate today as it was up for renewal, I still cannot access things securely.

Barry